Thread by @_cingraham

Alright, you guys wanna hear a funny/gross cancer story?

So one big headache throughout this whole thing has been my gallbladder. Whether due to the large stone in it or the proximity of the giant tumor in my liver, it’s had a tendency to flare up and cause a lot of pain

Normally they’d just go in and take it out, but the cancer complicates things. If they tried to remove it and things went south and they had to open me up, it could delay chemo by a lot

On the other hand if they just left it and it flared up and got infected during chemo, that could be life threatening

So they split the difference: they put a hole in my belly and stuck a tube in the gallbladder leading to an external drain. It’s called a cholesystostomy. Functionally it works a lot like a colostomy bag, but for bile

Kind of a pain in the ass but I don’t really notice it most of the time, it just kind of dangles down and hangs out by my thigh. Here’s what it looks like, for the morbid and curious:

Now, that dark green shit is the bile, and once a day I have to dump it out into the toilet or whatever. There’s never a lot, maybe 20-40 mls or so. But it’s enough that you damn sure don’t want to spill it accidentally.

Well.

You see that teal colored cap at the end of the bag? That’s the only thing holding the bile in. And baffling to me, it doesn’t screw or lock or snap or anything. It’s just a stopper, held on by a little pressure.

Very easy to see how if your leg is moving one way and the bag is getting pulled the opposite, it would be easy for that top to pop right off and let all the contents out. And that’s *exactly* what happened at 11 AM today as I was walking down the hall with my five year old.

All of a sudden I feel a warm rush down my leg. It’s the bile, pouring out and pooling on the floor. The kid shrieks and runs - he knows what it is but the fact that there is WEIRD STUFF coming out of DAD’S BODY is obviously unsettling to contemplate when you’re five.

I’m trying to like, roll up my pants to cinch the bag and avoid more spillage. But now the dog is thundering down the stairs toward me because he hears a ruckus, and there’s nothing a dog loves more than a ruckus.

And he sees me kind of hunched over the floor - very exciting! - and then he notices the strange green puddle that sort of smells like me but also sort of doesn’t, in a *very* interesting way, and he decides he must investigate immediately: with his mouth.

So the kid is screaming. The dog is joyfully experiencing a new taste sensation. And I’m trying to crabwalk to the bathroom to get a handle on things.

Anyway that’s a Saturday morning in the life of a lymphoma patient, I hope your day has been similarly #blessed